I am just hoping that this is the year I actually order some of Ippodo's Shincha. But I have never been a huge shincha seeker, I order it while its available but I don't go out of my way for it. I also know some Shincha from O-cha is definitely in my future.

Last year's disasters in Japan had an impact of my personal shincha purchasing. Normally at the start of shincha, I am often completely out of all Japanese greens, however last year I bought a bunch of 2010 Japanese greens not knowing what would happen with 2011 harvest teas.

So, since I had a bunch of 2010 on hand and due to the disasters, I approached 2011 shincha more conservatively, but still tried pretty many from tried and true vendors I have grown to trust. I did not really venture out from this circle for much of the 2011 harvest.

Hopefully, this shincha will see the resumption of personal traditions af trying new editions of familiar offerings ... but also trying new vendors and new teas once again.

I would also like to include at least one Shincha OTTI, hopefully 2 seperate Shincha OTTI.

So, this preparation for shincha includes personal reflection of last year's as I look forward to this year's!

I ordered some Xu Fu Long Ya from TS yesterday, my first time order from there, and I'm keeping an eye out for any other early Chinese offerings. Currently waiting on Shincha from Zencha, which is due in late April, and that seems most likely when ujeon from Korea will become available as well.

Open to suggestions for other early teas.

Does anyone else use Japanese teaware to brew Chinese tea? I wasn't thrilled with the aesthetics or apparent quality of the Chinese teaware I found online or in brick and mortar shops I have been to recently, so I went ahead and ordered this. http://www.zencha.net/c04505.php

I'd love to participate in an OTTI again! I don't see myself buying tons of 100 g bags of shincha from many different vendors, so an OTTI would certainly be an opportunity to branch out and try things that you might otherwise not try. Plus I loved the discussion last time I participated. I learned a lot from that. So yeah, let's do that!

How is the 88 nights? I've never ordered from kaburagien, how much does shipping cost for one or two tins to the states? (the site doesn't have much info on ordering or shipping). The tea pillow sounds like an interesting gimmick, but that would cost a fortune in shipping, ha.

Last year Kaburagien sent me the shipping cost when the tea was ready to ship. Last year the shipping cost for one can was 1200 yen, and I added a can of temomicha which brought the shipping total to 1680 yen. I won't be surprised if shipping costs are a little higher this year.

This year I am getting two cans of shincha and two packs of their soba noodles!